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Mark Your Calendars for HVACR Week

For three days in September, Baltimore will be the place “where the industry meets” when HPAC Engineering and sibling publication Contracting Business join forces to present the second annual HVACR Week.

Consisting of three events — HPAC Engineering's Engineering Green Buildings (EGB) Conference and Expo, in its seventh year, and Contracting Business' HVAC Comfortech and Commercial HVACR Symposium, in their 14th and second years, respectively — HVACR Week 2010 will bring mechanical-engineering professionals, facility managers, and commercial and residential contractors together under one roof to learn how to design, install, operate, and maintain higher-performing building systems and run more profitable businesses and see the latest offerings from the industry's leading manufacturers and suppliers.

The EGB component of HVACR Week will take place Sept. 23 and 24. This year's technical program represents an especially strong mix of timely topics and expert presenters offering proven, practical advice. Here is what you can expect:

We all know verification of building performance is important to increasing the marketability and asset value of a property, tracking and managing costs, and providing feedback on design and construction. What we do not always know is how best to go about it. In “Building Energy Rating Systems: Which Is Right for You?” Peter C. D'Antonio, PE, CEM, LEED AP, will provide a practical stepped approach to using the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED green-building certification program, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy's ENERGY STAR program, and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers' new Building Energy Quotient program.

What if you had a means of tracking the energy performance of a facility using a single-page Excel spreadsheet, one identifying the most energy-intensive processes and providing both individual-system and total-site benchmarks? “Practical Energy Benchmarking for Commercial, Institutional, and Light-Industrial Facilities,” presented by Gary W. Wamsley, PE, CEM, will offer just that.

How do you reduce data-center energy consumption without affecting the availability and performance of mission-critical systems? Don Beaty, PE, FASHRAE, will explain how in “Reducing Data-Center Energy Use Without Compromising Uptime.”

The emergence of Smart Grid is causing quite a stir. Anto Budiardjo will explain what Smart Grid is, discuss how it will impact the HVAC industry, and identify business opportunities in “Smart Grid: What It Means to the HVAC Industry.”

The complexity and uniqueness of commercial HVAC systems can give rise to “drift,” or degradation in performance resulting from ill-functioning mechanical and control systems. Jon Greenberg, CEM, LEED AP, will discuss how mitigating drift can lead to increased energy efficiency and sustained operating-cost reductions in “Constant Commissioning for Continual Energy Efficiency.”

Although commissioning is widely used, there is no widely accepted approach to specifying and purchasing it for the best results at the lowest price. In “Best Practices for Specifying and Purchasing Commissioning for Schools,” Ron Wilkinson, PE, LEED AP, will share tricks of the trade.

As in years past, attendees will receive a letter of attendance, which they can submit for consideration for professional-development hours and the like, for each 60-minute session.